


You Haunt Me There Too

by Perfunctorily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Sibling Relationships, Gen, NOT anti-Ned, implied past Benjen Stark/Jory Cassel, kind of, ned is trying his best, very vaguely implied Benjen Stark/Jeor Mormont
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28561668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfunctorily/pseuds/Perfunctorily
Summary: While visiting Winterfell for a royal feast, Benjen Stark learns that his nephew plans to take the black, and struggles to deal with the mixed feelings brought up by this revelation.
Relationships: Benjen Stark & Lyanna Stark, Benjen Stark & Ned Stark, Benjen stark & jory cassel, Jon Snow & Benjen Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	You Haunt Me There Too

**Author's Note:**

> A part of this fic ended up needing to be a canon dialogue scene, so many of the lines are lifted directly from the text. I tried to embrace the challenge and make each line, which seemed to have a clear-cut meaning from one perspective, mean something else from the opposite pov. I hope GRRM's dialogue does not seem awkward or out of place with my prose.

The room that had been prepared for him, that Desmond showed him to, was not his room. It had been near to fifteen years since Benjen Stark had slept in the chamber he thought of as his room, the room of his boyhood, but still, however briefly, he always had to remind himself every time he came to Winterfell that he would not be sleeping in that room. It was probably Bran’s now.

But it was also not the room he customarily took on his visits. Catelyn and Vayon Poole had seen to it that Benjen did not sleep in the stables, no mean feat, with how late he had come, and the sheer size of the retinue the king had brought with him. It seemed the castle was full to the brim with stewards and pages and knights and ladies in waiting, freeriders and hangers-on, but Poole had insisted that he was Lord Eddard’s own brother and First Ranger besides, and would not be put out with the horsegrooms.

Chuckling, he plumped the down pillow that had, along with rich blankets and furs, been placed with much care upon the straw palette in the guardsman’s cell he’d been given.

 _That will have been Cat’s idea._ She had never been to Castle Black, and could not know how much ruder his cell was there, First Ranger or no.

Catching sight of his cuff, just too short on his wrist, he tugged it down uncomfortably. It was his finest shirt, black velvet, supple and rich; he only wore it to feasts at Winterfell, and despised it immensely. It had made as many trips to and from the castle as he had since he’d had it made almost ten years ago now. It seemed to fit more poorly every time. It was too loose in the chest now, too short in the sleeves. Most of Benjens clothes had begun hanging loose on him, in recent months.

“My lord?” Someone hovered in the doorway.

Benjen looked up to see a skinny girl in a simple, poorly fitting dress that was too short on her. He guessed she was Arya’s age, and tried to recall her name. _One of Joseth’s? Shyra was it?_ “Yes?” he said.

“My father sent me, says Master Poole was in the kitchens, lamenting he’d have t’ come fetch you when he had so many barrels of wine to count, so father bade me come tell you instead.” She fidgeted at her ill-fit kirtle, there were smudges of flour on her sleeves.

 _Gage’s then, not Joseth’s._ He smiled at her. “Tell me what?

“Lord Stark wants t’ see you. Lord Eddard that is, my lord, in his solar, before the feast.”

“Ah, yes of course, I’ll go to him directly. Thank you.”

She stood for another moment, as though expecting something more of him. He almost reached for the purse of coins lent to him from Castle Black’s meagre treasury to offer a copper, but with a quick bow, she darted off without another word.

The scullion was gone by the time he reached the doorway, but he looked after the way she had run in any case, puzzled. Had Gage not had only a son the last time Benjen came to Winterfell? _Gods, a man reaches Thirty and his memory goes as quickly as his knees._

The way up to the solar was the same as it had ever been. His boots fell into old familiar tracks, past the armory, across the courtyard. Everywhere Southron gentlefolk were milling in between the Winterfell staff which scurried here and there preparing for the feast. The summer air was cooling with dusk. Lights were coming on in windows that he had not seen lit in is lifetime. The castle was alive around him, everyone pink-cheeked and excited. _A feast! a royal feast!_ they all seemed to be saying to themselves and to each other. It was a feast such as had not been held in decades. When had a king last come to Winterfell? Not since good Queen Alysanne had a royal progress come so far north.

The path he took was the same he’d taken a thousand times when he was a boy. He could not help but walk quickly, as though he would be punished for tardiness. _Lord Stark wants to see me in his solar, he cannot be kept waiting_ , he thought wryly. He could never shake the feeling that he was being summoned by father to be scolded. _What have I done this time, my lord? Did Walys tell you I skipped my lessons to spar with Lya in the godswood? Did he tell you she won?_

Ben tugged his sleeves down as he neared the door, all too aware of their chafing, just too high upon his wrists. Father would have noticed, father would have raised his eyebrow in that way, despairing of his youngest son, always too gawky, too callow, too girlish… Benjen had always gotten into trouble. _Lyanna always got me in trouble, but she could lie her way back out. I never could keep a secret_. So many years later, his heart still stuttered in his chest just to approach the door. He would have rathered the silver chain he wore were his customary black ringmail instead.

For, no matter how long it had been, it would always be father’s solar, father’s great oaken desk revealed through the standing open door, and behind it, sitting in father’s chair, Eddard.

His brother smiled warmly and stood. “Ben.”

“Ned.” He ducked his head a bit under the doorway.

Ned was there already to clasp his hand with one of his own and pat his arm with the other. “It’s good to see you.” He gestured to one of the other chairs before the desk. “Please, sit, have some wine, tell me about the Wall, of Lord Mormont and the journey here. I regret I could not meet you when you arrived, I was with the king.” As he spoke he moved back to the desk, poured two cups from a ewer. Benjen watched him, not having to guess where Eddard had likely been with the king. Ben would go down later that night by himself, no doubt. Ned’s movements were stiff, the cheer in his voice forced. He sat heavily, “How _is_ your old bear? I had hoped he would come to see Robert. If half of what you write to me is true, the king should hear of it.”

“Getting older by the day, and more stubborn. You know he can’t stand Robert, all he sees is the man who took his son to Pyke and turned him into some fool knight. His rear becomes ever more attached to his seat at Castle Black. It will take more than a royal progress to bestir him.” He sat, smiling to think of Jeor, how he would rage to hear it. _I’ll bestir my old fat rear to box your ears, pup,_ he’d say. Ben took the wine and gave it a perfunctory sip. Sweet, but watered heavily. “Fear not about welcoming me, I thought to sneak in unannounced but your little squirrel of a son spotted me straight off from the battlements.”

“You’ve seen the children then.”

“Fought off an army of them that beset me on all sides.”

“Good. They are always so delighted when you visit. They ask about you when it has been a while,” Ned said distractedly, he had not touched his wine.

“Eddard, you did not send Vayon to find me all the way out in the guards’ keep to ask after the Lord Commander’s health, or if I’ve greeted the children yet.” Benjen was not so enamored of himself that he thought his brother wanted a cup of wine with him for the simple pleasure of his company, not with a royal feast about to begin, with a thousand other duties he could be attending to.

Ned made one of his pained, self-deprecating faces. “No, I did not.” He moved to pick up his cup, but it never left the table. He looked at it for a long moment before he spoke again. “Have you spoken with Jon yet? Was he with the others?”

Ben shook his head. It had seemed odd that he was not there with Robb to pester him with a score of questions as he usually was, but Sansa had also not been in evidence, getting ready for the banquet with her mother doubtlessly, and he had thought Jon similarly occupied elsewhere, or being made scarce, purposefully out of Robert’s view.

A deep furrow had appeared between Ned’s eyebrows. “I thought not.” He did not look up from the cup, which he idly tilted back and forth on the desk. “He’s going to ask you to bring him north with you, to take the black.”

Ben sat for a breath, considering.

When he did not reply, Ned continued, “he’s been working up to it, I think. He has not come to me yet, but he and Robb have been quarreling about something, and it has long been on his mind. I believe he will ask you to broach the subject with me.”

“And if I did?” Ben put his wine down. “Broach the subject with you?”

The furrow deepened, as though sloshing the wine just to the brim of the cup without spilling it was a very difficult and important task, “I should forbid it.”

Carefully, Ben said, “but?” Benjen Stark did not want to make his brother angry, and there were few things that could provoke the lord of Winterfell to anger, but what was to be done with Jon Snow had ever been one of them.

“But I fear I may have no choice. Ben, I cannot force Jon to stay here against his will. It would be a terrible cruelty to he and Catelyn both.” He sounded far from angry, raking his hand through his hair, greying now at the temples, Benjen noticed, and tried to remember if there had been quite that much grey in Ned’s hair the last time they had seen one another. “I cannot take him with me. The South would be crueler still, and I would not have the eyes of all the court on him.”

“He would not be safer on the Wall.”

“He would be with you.”

Benjen sucked a sharp breath in. _Now you would have me keep him safe? Now! When he is nearly a man grown and I am half a stranger to him? Now you would send him to me? Only when you have no other choice?_ He held his tongue, surprised at his own sudden anger. When he was sure he had it in check, he said, “he is very young to make such a decision. Life is long when you have sworn the whole of it away.”

Ned did take a drink from his wine then. He grimaced as if it were bitter. “Here I am half arguing for it. No, you are right, I would prefer him here, safe with family, where he belongs.”

 _What you prefer, my lord._ Benjen’s tongue was a sour heavy thing in his mouth. _Always, what you prefer with Jon._

He licked his lips, preparing to ask what Lord Eddard would have him do, but before he could, there was a polite knock at the open door.

“My lord,” said Jory Cassel, “the feast will be beginning soon, Lady Catelyn awaits you with the children.” 

Ben turned to see the captain of his brother’s household guards. Jory was also in his finest, a grey doublet with the wolf heads of his house picked out in white thread all along the collar and the sleeves. He wore his hair cropped close, like a soldier, his beard was neatly trimmed.

Jory flashed a smile. “The king and queen also await you, though his grace may be awaiting the roast pork more eagerly, my lord.”

Ned smiled faintly. “We must not keep Robert from the pork.” He stood, giving Ben one more pained look, before he hurried out.

Still tight with anger, Ben followed him, and stopped beside Jory Cassel to watch him go.

Once Ned was well away, Jory turned toward Benjen. He stood closer than respect or deference should have allowed, he tilted his chin up at him impudently. “Stark,” he said.

Benjen looked down at him, standing tall in his black finery, he loomed over the captain of the guards, cold and imperious, he replied, “Cassel.”

They stood for a moment in tense silence, glaring.

Ben cracked first, and smiled.

Jory’s serious face broke into a grin, and he yanked Ben into a hug, laughing. “Gods! I’m glad to see you. What has it been? A year?”

Ben laughed himself, anger forgotten. He ran his fingers through the short hair on top of Jory’s head. “At least that! Have they started shaving you like a sheep?”

“Near enough. Beth sits me down and attacks me with shears every two moons.”

Benjen held him out at arms length by his shoulders to look him over, head to heels. “It suits you, you look quite the captain.”

Jory prodded at his ribs through the velvet tunic. “And you look half a skeleton. Do they not feed their First Rangers at the Wall?”

Ben swatted at his hands. “You sound like Old Nan. If you had ever tried three-finger Hobb’s cooking you would drop a few stone as well.” Benjen had always been slim. He had grown thinner of late, it was true, but it was hardly as bad as that, he had simply been spending longer out ranging. There was too much to investigate, too much to discover, not enough time to hunt or forage along the way. He needed to travel light and swift, and alone, chasing rumors and shadows, dark shapes moving in the wood. He could not set traps or waste an afternoon picking billberries. Hobb could not pack him off with enough honeycakes and salt fish to keep him in more than half rations for long moons out in the wild. Oftentimes, he simply forgot to eat. He tried to look substantial and unconcerned. “It is time we were down to the feast.”

“As you say,” Jory conceded, but as Benjen moved away, the captain caught his hand and held him back. “You’re sure you are alright? You seem tired, Ben.”

He _felt_ tired, but he mustered a smile. “It was a long road here, and I hate feasts.” He reached out and gently brushed a knuckle across Jory’s cheek. Dear Jory, who once he would have told anything in the world to, but after one lie, what was another? After so many lies, what was but one more? Jory would surely be going south with Ned and need not concern himself with whatever mischief Mance Rayder was about up the Milkwater, or what was causing whole families, whole tribes of Free Folk to flee their towns and villages for the deserter’s protection. “It is only the feast, my friend, you should not worry over me.”

Jory gave that wry smile, laying his other hand atop the one he already held. “You never let me worry over you, yet you keep giving me cause to worry.”

 _Now you sound like_ _Jeor._

The lords and ladies and their households were already assembled when they arrived, the noise of the great hall beyond them heralded the banquet already gathered and awaiting them all eagerly. Jory took his place among the guards, and Benjen made for his own at the back of the procession. Even the king looked resplendent in his silks, though they were quickly becoming sweat-soaked and lank. Benjen murmured a greeting to Catelyn with a kiss to the back of her hand before taking up his position behind the brothers Lannister, beside young Theon Greyjoy. Benjen had never seen Tyrion Lannister, the Imp, before, but the little man offered a polite nod as Ben passed. Ser Jaime, whom he had met at Harrenhal, only smirked.

Greyjoy seemed to think the whole affair was rather amusing, and tried to get Benjen to laugh at the way the Imp walked as they entered the Great Hall, but Benjen was not in much of a mood to humor the boy’s cruel jape. He’d come across an infant dwarf once, a wildling babe left cradled in the roots of a wierwood as a changeling. It had been dead when he found it of course, perished in the night of the cold. No fairy creatures had come to exchange it for a true healthy babe. In his experience, the children of the forest were not much in the habit of stealing babes or leaving their own in their staid. Those things that did take infants left out for them in the night, well, they were not much in the habit of giving them back.

Tyrion Lannister did not seem like a man that it would be wise to laugh at, and his waddling gait was less amusing than the king’s.

The hall was full to bursting, even with extra trestle tables assembled, men were sitting elbow to elbow and knee to knee. Benjen scanned the crowd for his nephew, who was not among the lords and their children. He almost did not spot him, near the door at a table of squires, between Cayn’s boy and Tommard’s. _Where Robert is not like to look too hard at him._ He blended in with the others, he might have been any squire, any Winterfell boy. But Jon Snow was watching them all with bright, sharp eyes.

Despite his sour mood, Ben’s heart warmed when Rickon strayed from the path to the dais, pausing at Jon’s bench to ask why he was there and not in the procession with them, it took both Jon and Robb urging him on to get him toddling along again. Jon’s eyes found Benjen’s as he passed and he knew he would not be able to avoid the conversation, he furnished his nephew with a smile. _We will speak later._

And later it was, four hours later, when the commons had grown loud and raucous with drink, Robert was all the way into his cups, Catelyn had taken little Rickon to bed, and even gregarious Bran was starting to rub his eyes and pick at his food, no matter how much he wanted to keep chatting with prince Tommen.

Ben had extricated himself from the high table and was making his rounds, clasping hands and clapping shoulders, congratulating guardsmen who had been only squires last time he had come. He had even picked up little Beth Cassel and spun her around to her delight before the singers and bards. It was a high harper now, there had been a man with a lute before and half a dozen others that had come tailing after the retinue had taken their turns playing to the hall. A royal procession brought its own entertainment with it. The lute had lingered in Benjen’s thoughts, for reasons he could not quite name. Something about the man had made him uneasy. _Everything makes me uneasy, these days_. They were uneasy times.

Last, he came to the younger squires, and to Jon. Who seemed to have been enjoying his time away from his lord father’s watchful eye, where wine was free-flowing and the talk was bawdy. Jon was doing something under the table. Ben caught a glimpse of white fur, a flash of teeth.

“Is this one of the direwolves I’ve heard so much of?”

Jon looked up, brightening as Calon, and Tommard the younger, Tomtoo as they called him, spotted Benjen and quickly wriggled aside to make room for him. Ben grinned and ruffled Jon’s hair. It had grown long, since last Benjen had seen him, almost to his collar. Ever more like Ned he looked, skinny and a little awkward, but not made all of elbows and knees as Ben had been at that age. “Yes. His name is Ghost,” Jon said eagerly. He had a cup of wine in his other hand which looked half drained already. 

Ben swung a leg over the bench to sit, and took the cup from him, sipping. It was not half so watered as Ned’s wine had been. “Summerwine. Nothing so sweet,” he studied his nephew, his flushed face and shining eyes. “How many cups have you had, Jon?”

Jon only smiled. Not the boyish, cautious, Ned’s smiles he usually wore, but one that was all mischief and complicity. 

Benjen laughed. “As I feared.” The squires had likely been egging him on, excited to have their lord’s son as one of their own for the night. He doubted Jon had ever shared drinks with them before. “Ah, well. I believe I was younger than you the first time I got truly and sincerely drunk.” He had been twelve, Lyanna a year older, Duncan Liddle had been there as well. Liddle’s clan had come to the Winter Town that bitter cold year before the false spring. They had smuggled three skins of wine up into the hayloft above the stables. Duncan had been shy and not indulged, disinclined to disobey his father. Lyanna teased him til he turned red as the wine. Benjen had drunk a whole skinfull and been sick.

Ben took an onion from a tray to chase away the taste of summerwine, along with the memory. He watched the wolf instead. A pup in truth, all lanky legs and too-big paws, much too big, it would grow to be a massive animal. It gnawed silently on the carcass of a whole chicken, but kept one red eye trained on Benjen.

“A very quiet wolf,” he mused.

“He’s not like the others.” Something in Jon’s voice caught, but he hurried on, his words almost tripping over each other. “He never makes a sound. That’s why I named him Ghost. That, and because he’s white. The others are all dark, grey or black.”

“There are still direwolves beyond the Wall. We hear them on our rangings.” Ben looked back at his nephew and saw his face had fallen. Benjen could guess why. _Not like the others._ “Don’t you usually eat at table with your brothers?”

“Most times. But tonight Lady Stark thought it might give insult to the royal family to seat a bastard among them.” His voice had gone dull and hollow.

“I see,” Ben said. There was no surprise there. _It is not my place. He is not my son,_ he reminded himself. He scanned the dais, not for Catelyn, who had not returned from taking the little one to bed. Benjen’s eyes fell on her lord husband instead. Eddard Stark looked unhappy and tired, and like he would rather be anywhere in the world but on the high table at a royal feast. “My brother does not seem very festive tonight,” he said, not kindly.

Jon leaned close and whispered, “the queen is angry too. Father took the king down to the crypts this afternoon. The queen didn’t want him to go.”

He looked at his nephew sidelong, _that_ was more of a surprise. Benjen had not spared much more than a glance to Cersei Lannister the whole night, but it was true, she was fuming, sitting stiff with cold fury as the king laughed and drank and groped a serving girl. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon?”

The boy beamed.

A small, bitter thing within him spoke, thinking of Ned, years ago telling him _I will keep the boy._ “We could use a man like you on the Wall.”

Jon began excitedly telling him how well Ser Rodrik thought he was doing in the yard, and then, just as Ned had feared, begged Benjen to take him back to the Wall with him.

Benjen cursed himself for a loose-tongued fool. _He is not my son! Do I think to steal him out from under Eddard’s wing? Separate him from his brothers? I gave up any right I had when I ran away north._ He backed water as best he could. “The Wall is a hard place for a boy, Jon.”

Jon only insisted that he was nearly a man grown. It was so foolishly, childishly untrue that Ben could hardly bear it. He refilled the cup of wine, and downed most of it in one drought. Before him was the boy, half a man, more than half a child still, who just yesterday it seemed, had been a chubby toddler gripping Benjen’s fingers in his tiny fists as he struggled to walk the length of the nursery, had been a lad of six, shouting and dashing across the drawbridge at his approach, had been a silent infant in Ned’s arms, so small, so in danger, looking up at him with huge dark eyes.

Of all things, they argued about Daeron the Young Dragon, who had conquered Dorne, and decimated his own army in the process, and died at eighteen, betrayed.

Once again, Jon said, “I want to serve in the Night’s Watch, Uncle,” so sincerely.

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Jon.” He wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and shake him, but he spoke as casually as he could. “The Night’s Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We have no families.” _Ned always wanted you to be with family._ “None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor.”

“A bastard can have honor too! I am ready to swear your oath,” Jon snapped, a threatening flare of temper in his voice.

Benjen felt such a surge of affection and derision for the boy. His anger would be dangerous some day, the way the wolf would be a formidable beast, but they were yet only snarling puppies. ”You are a boy of fourteen, not a man, not yet.” He searched for anything to say to him, anything but what he meant. “Until you have known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up.” It seemed a feeble argument.

“I don’t care about that!” Jon’s eyes were shining, and not just with drink.

“You might, if you knew what it meant,” Benjen said. He knew he was speaking unwisely, the wine had made his tongue clumsy. _If you knew how many died that you could live, you might not so readily toss your life away._ “If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son.”

Jon actually did snarl then. “I’m not your son!”

As many times as he had told himself as much, it still hurt to hear from the boy’s own mouth. He stood, drawing back almost as if struck. _No, you are not my son. But you might have been._ “More’s the pity,” he said, reaching for Jon, placing a hand on his trembling shoulder, _you might have been, were I not such a coward._ Ned would not forgive him if he did not make every effort to dissuade him. Ben did not think he would forgive himself. “Come back to me after you’ve fathered a few bastards of your own, and we’ll see how you feel.”

The brimming tears threatened to stream down his nephew’s face as he grit out, “I will _never_ father a bastard. Never!” He stood abruptly, “I must be excused,” and dashed from the hall before the tears could fall, nearly bowling over a serving girl as he went. The wolf pup loped out after him, leaving the half-eaten chicken on the floor for the dogs.

Ben stood there for a moment watching him go, hand still half outstretched, before realizing that the table had gone quiet. Tomtoo and Calon were openly gaping. The hall felt very hot and loud around him. It had only been a small disturbance, most went right on feasting and talking and singing, but when he looked back at the high table, Ned caught his eye. The look of concern only served to make him angry. _You sowed this,_ he wanted to shout at his brother, _he will reap what we have done to him for his whole life!_ He could not keep Lord Eddard’s gaze. He made his own escape in the opposite direction Jon had gone, behind a tapestry and out the servant’s doorway down to the kitchens. Taking the stairs two at at time with long strides, he dodged as nimbly as he might around a serving boy as he came up with a freshly decanted flagon of wine, and snuck out the delivery door, past the well, and was out into the night before he could be waylaid by anyone.

The night was scarcely cold enough for a man to see his breath standing still or walking, but Ben had almost broken into a run, as if he could escape his ghosts if only he went fast enough, his long legs carried him, leaving puffs of mist behind him as he went. There was no snow on the cobbles to leave tracks betraying his destination, out past the First Keep, to the crypts.

Benjen Stark went to see his sister.

Down in the dark, he found her. He had brought no light, but he knew how far to go. Feeling blindly along the row of statues, he knew when he had come to her. She was just where she had been, where he had left her last time he had come. After Brandon, then father, each holding their iron swords, then came Lyanna, her hands folded gently in her lap. Someone had given her a flower. Robert, he supposed, or Ned.

Still panting from his foolish headlong flight, he took the flower, smelled it, it was fresh, still fragrant. He couldn’t know its color in the dark, but he was sure it was a winter rose from the godswood. There would be no red glass house roses for her.

His blood was rushing in his ears, a dull roar. He grit is teeth and it was all he could do not to crush the flower in his fist.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked her. He was angry. At Ned, to be sure, and worse, at Jon. “How can I let him throw himself away? He’s all that’s left of you.” The darkness around him was silent. If she heard, he could not know.

He crushed the flower, and threw it on the floor.

“I would have taken him!” he spat, “I offered to make the boy my son, but Ned promised _you_! I made my peace with it. I have my own life! How can he give him to me now? How can I take him?” His words echoed meaninglessly off the stone walls around him, the chill crept into his bones. “I fled past the edge of the world to escape your ghost. Must you haunt me there too!?” he yelled into the empty dark.

He reached out sightlessly and felt for her face. There it was, serene and impassive under his fingers. Lovely, he knew, Ned had spared no expense on the sculptor. 

It was Ned’s sister though, not Ben’s.

She had been their little Lya, Father, Brandon, and Ned’s. But she would always be Benjen’s big sister, who thrashed Ethan Glover once for making him cry, who could beat him sparring seven times out of ten, who had never told about his and Jory’s grand scheme to run away and become sellswords, which had ended that same night with the both of them soaked, freezing and hungry, creeping back in through the Hunter’s Gate in the hour of the eel. Lyanna had caught them, and spun such a tale to the guards, and snuck them all back into the Great Keep. But under the briefest questioning from father the next day, Benjen had cracked, and gotten his hide tanned with a belt.

Eddard had paid the sculptor to make her lovely, and he left her flowers as often as he might, but he had not given her a sword. Ned loved her with all his heart, Benjen had no doubt, but how could he have known her? He’d lived half his life in the Vale. He’d thought she’d let Robert take her to wife.

Benjen felt old resentment well up. Ned, who had been there to hear her last words, who had decided the fate of the boy before Benjen even knew of his birth, who had not even been there at Winterfell with them. Their whole childhood, Ned had been _away_ , being someone else’s brother. But when Lyanna died, she was Ned’s sister to mourn.

Ned’s sister, his crypts, his castle, _his_ son.

 _All Ned’s,_ he thought bitterly, there in the dark, surrounded by Ned’s ghosts, Ned’s memories. He hoarded them, Lord Eddard Stark did, the memories, kept them jealously. Even their mother, who Benjen remembered not at all, Ned recalled, and told him of only in frugal scraps, niggard’s recollections. Mother, and Lyanna and Father and Brandon. Ned kept them all close to haunt him here at Winterfell.

And he kept Jon too. Close, safe, secret.

His breath hitched, he leaned forward, awkward with her up on a plinth, but he was tall enough to bring his sweating forehead to rest against her stone one. “I never could keep a secret. You always lied your way out of trouble, now look what all our lies have done.” He cupped her stone cheek. She had never been as pretty as that.

The anger bled away, leeched out like the heat through contact with cold stone. He slumped, his head falling to her shoulder. “It’s not his fault, I know,” he said, feeling the tears well, “I must not blame Ned, none of it was his doing.”

He did love his brother. Benjen Stark had never stopped loving his brother. But some wounds would never heal properly. Perhaps he resented Ned for being blameless. There was enough blame to go around, surely. _Poor sad blameless Ned._ Ben gave a bitter, rueful laugh.

“What will we do with your Jon, Lya? What can we do? He could live ten lives, a hundred lives, and it would not be enough to even the scale. And he would live one small frozen life up in the cold.”

He stayed like that for long minutes, resting his head on her shoulder, his arm thrown around her in a mockery of an embrace. Until suddenly he knew, though she had not moved or spoken, but he knew all the same. If he were the sort to believe in that kind of thing, he might have imagined that her shade had reached out of the stone and laid her hand on his head, stroked his hair as she had when they were children and he had been foolish and weepy, and she had been clever and strong. _He did not ask to be born of so much sorrow. His life is his own, it cannot be lived in paying back a debt of blood that no man could ever hope to clear._

“I’m sorry Lyanna, we could not keep him safe forever,” he murmured, before straightening up. The blackness was still perfect. Crouching, he felt around on the stone floor until he found the crushed flower, and left it where it had been in her lap.

The way out of the crypts always felt longer, as if the dark was reluctant to give him up, knowing he would one day reside there forever, but his foot eventually found the stone stair, and he was soon up and out into the clear night, which seemed bright and alive compared to the ebon stillness of the crypts. The lights of the all the castle danced and swam before his eyes.

Tomorrow. He would speak with Ned tomorrow, or perhaps Luwin, he would have some insight on the boy that his father might not. If Jon truly wished to take the black, they could not stop him, nor should they, it was his choice to make.

He thought of how he had panicked at the thought of being with a woman, and almost chuckled to himself. Perhaps it would not be the worst place for him after all.

He made for the Guards’ Keep, But as he walked, lost in thought, he nearly ran into a man who he had not noticed in the shadow of the broken tower.

“Pardons, m’lord, didn’t see ye in those blacks.”

The man made to hurry past, but Ben stood firm in his way. “Are you lost, singer?” It was the lute player from the feast. Once again, something about him made Ben uneasy, something about his face, shadowed though it was beneath his long brown hair. “The banquet hall is just that way.” He nodded back in the other direction, towards the light and sound of a feast still going on.

“Oh, is it?” The man showed his teeth, they glittered in what was not quite a friendly smile. “A thousand thanks, m’lord. I had gotten m’self quite turned about in the dark.”

His voice seemed odd to Benjen, he had not had such a heavy peasant’s drawl when he sang in the Great Hall. A twinge of recognition nagged at the back of his mind. Where had he seen this man? “Were you looking for something out here? The castle grounds are quite large, and I would not have you come unawares across the wolves.”

“Looking, aye.” The smile had spread into a grin. “I’ll be off back to the feasting now though, wouldn’t want t’ meet a wolf face t’ face, as ye say, m’lord.”

Perhaps he had sung at Winterfell before, or in some tavern Ben had stopped at on his way to or from the Wall, there were winesinks aplenty between here and the Gift. A nagging suspicion was not reason enough to waylay the man. Ben turned back toward the Guards' Keep. “A good night to you,” Benjen said, leaving him.

“And to you, my lord First Ranger,” the man said, still grinning, and was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> –The scullion Benjen encounters is Turnip, the child of Gage, the cook at Winterfell, who Bran thinks of as ‘the cook’s boy’ but the appendix lists as a pot girl and one of the women of Winterfell. I just think it would be cute and fun if there was a little gender experimentation going on.
> 
> –According to the Wiki, Benjen was born in 267 or later, and Jory was born in 271 or earlier, but considering that Jory was at Ned and Catelyn’s wedding in 283, so likely a combatant in the rebellion, but did not go with Ned to the Tower of Joy, so was likeIy not serving as his squire, I don’t think he can have been younger than 15 at the time, making his year of birth 268, and Benjen was still young enough to be considered a ‘pup’ at harrenhal in 281, so I would not count him as older than 14 then. So for the purposes of this fic, they are close to the same age and grew up together at Winterfell.
> 
> -Gosh, I wonder who this mysterious singer skulking around Winterfell the night of the feast might have been! And what was he looking for when Ben came across him!?
> 
> Comments much appreciated! Or feel free to find me at the-perfunctorily.tumblr.com


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